Was december 2011 the right time to release SWTOR?

[Wiyld]

lolok.

You clearly do not belong in this thread. By your logic, WoW shouldn't still be active since it feels like its already dated- because it is.

That would be true if wow as not like 8 years old, but it is, so it feels as it should


By your logic, every new model of car that comes out should be a model T right? Then over time it should develop into a modern car?

Bullshit, if your going to release a modern mega game, it should have features and functionality that the current market expects, not rest on the fact that the typical MMO sucks at release and people just accept this as an inevitable requirement for any big game.

Remember, the game makers can only get away with what you pay them to get away with.

[Deleted]

Thinking people would play about 2 hours a day was a massive oversight, for a new MMO, especially one with the additional addictive element of story 6 hours per day would be the bare minimum many people would play.

[Demiknight]

I'd probably say that for EA shareholders the game was released at the right time. The early sales and subscription amounts covered the cost of development. With more time they could have reduced the number of in game bugs. However, an MMO is really "never done" so there isn't exactly a set time to release. It's interesting that I found with WoW launch the server crashed a lot, but when the server was up, the content was working. In TOR I've not experience a server crash... but almost every day I encounter something (UI, quest, etc) that has issues. WoW's problems were likely load related issues, while TOR is more quality oversights.

All of that said, I think the launch date and glitches have had way less impact than open way too many servers. The current population levels just don't create a happening server feel.

[Forsedar]

That would be true if wow as not like 8 years old, but it is, so it feels as it should


By your logic, every new model of car that comes out should be a model T right? Then over time it should develop into a modern car?

Bullshit, if your going to release a modern mega game, it should have features and functionality that the current market expects, not rest on the fact that the typical MMO sucks at release and people just accept this as an inevitable requirement for any big game.

Remember, the game makers can only get away with what you pay them to get away with.

Your comparisons are irrelevant. Just because YOU want something doesn't necessarily mean it should be in the game immediately. What the people expect is just asinine half of the time. They want everything WoW had, but then if that were the case they would just call it a WoW clone (oh wait they already do call it that). Its a lose/lose situation for any new MMO coming to the market. I am willing to bet my house that we will see flaming threads like this for GW2. Its just inevitable.

[llcjay1]

They said they did not want the customizable UI at launch because they wanted everyone to get used to the new UI and layouts before being able to switch it around. They want the game to be user friendly.

That is why I said I was splitting hairs. It is not a big issue for me because they did succeed in making in pretty accessible. I'm pretty happy with the simplistic UI. It is just going to be nice to put things where I want them.

[Forsedar]

That is why I said I was splitting hairs. It is not a big issue for me because they did succeed in making in pretty accessible. I'm pretty happy with the simplistic UI. It is just going to be nice to put things where I want them.

My thoughts exactly. I'm glad I had time to get used to everything but I'm also now happy I can position my 4 abilities (I'm a merc...)

[llcjay1]

I'd probably say that for EA shareholders the game was released at the right time. The early sales and subscription amounts covered the cost of development. With more time they could have reduced the number of in game bugs. However, an MMO is really "never done" so there isn't exactly a set time to release. It's interesting that I found with WoW launch the server crashed a lot, but when the server was up, the content was working. In TOR I've not experience a server crash... but almost every day I encounter something (UI, quest, etc) that has issues. WoW's problems were likely load related issues, while TOR is more quality oversights.

All of that said, I think the launch date and glitches have had way less impact than open way too many servers. The current population levels just don't create a happening server feel.

I agree, but from the amount of preorders and projected sales, they were probably just trying to guess at how many servers were needed. There really is no way to be able to foresee how many people will stick with am MMO after release.

The problem is, I don't see them merging servers any time soon because it is a PR nightmare. When you see the phrases, "server mergers" or "server closures," you immediately think that a game is declining and internet alarm bells start ringing.

Plus, we have no idea what 1.2 will do to subs. They could spike again and then all those servers will be nice.

[Forsedar]

I agree, but from the amount of preorders and projected sales, they were probably just trying to guess at how many servers were needed. There really is no way to be able to foresee how many people will stick with am MMO after release.

The problem is, I don't see them merging servers any time soon because it is a PR nightmare. When you see the phrases, "server mergers" or "server closures," you immediately think that a game is declining and internet alarm bells start ringing.

Plus, we have no idea what 1.2 will do to subs. They could spike again and then all those servers will be nice.

The excitement for 1.2 is pretty high so I'm hoping for an increase in subs!

[Arlee]

Is it just me who reads this and feels like they may have missunderstood parts of the MMO market? Especially when released just before the christmas holiday season. Even if people don't play 6+ hours a day, many people will play for 2-3 hours a day, on an MMO, which from this statement, it doesn't sound like this is what they were expecting. It seems odd to me that they would release an MMO and expect people to play it like a single player game.

I also think having no level 50 premades in the beta was probably a mistake. I can understand why they might make this descision, but I think it was definately the wrong one.

I know bioware is new to MMOs and in areas like this, their inexperience shows.

Absolutely... though I think they are learning quickly; and I think quicker than any other new to mmo's company.

[Alatian]

Yes.

Holiday launch.
Slow point in Cataclysm.
No GW2.
No Tera.

The timing was pretty perfect, I just think the game would have benefited from 2-3 months more polish before release.

[xeonix]

The game's timeline was fine. I think it was the perfect launch, and the magic BioWare did was to filter all 'unwanted' players within the first month.
The worst player base quited after the free sub month, the remaining and ever increasing community is really solid atm with the occasional pvp flame-wars going on but that's it .Those inpatient to wait for improvement etc, are usually the same guys who are inpatient during dungeons/raids/warzones etc, so with them bailing out i think the game received rather than loose.
I am personally VERY Happy that panda / d3 / gw2 is coming out now so that the community is filtered more. I can foresee a prosperous future for the game taking in consideration the amount of 'love' they display to fix the game's bugs and constantly improve it.

I do hope that they are keeping up the 'major content' patches between 2-3 months time as they promised and then i ll never unsub .
my 2 cents.

[Grable]

Hell no. The amount of gamebreaking bugs SWTOR had at launch (and for the first two months) was immense. Game should be released atleast 3 months later.

[igame]

I disagree, entirely. Patch 1.2 SHOULDN'T have been the release patch. Sorry, but there was enough content released at the start. This new patch gives us even more to do since all content has been dealt with already. Its not like they are making a ton of drastic changes. People just want to complain. They said specifically they didn't want to release the capability of customizing your UI at launch to give people time to adjust to the new MMO and UI feeling.

Everything was done for a reason. The game has been completely playable since launch, to say otherwise is ignorant at best.

BW certainly take the crown in retarded excuses.
"Oh we did not think people will level so fast"
"Oh you can have custom UI in pretty much every game including F2Ps but we'll just be douches and make a retarded excuse instead"

I would be quite interested to see if these lame duck excuses pay off. Eagerly awaiting GW2, D3, MoP, tera etc to hit, let's see how ToR is looking after that because as it seems all thso egames have learnt from ToR's mistakes, however ToR learnt nothing from WoW or the many other MMos mistakes.

[Forsedar]

BW certainly take the crown in retarded excuses.
"Oh we did not think people will level so fast"
"Oh you can have custom UI in pretty much every game including F2Ps but we'll just be douches and make a retarded excuse instead"

I would be quite interested to see if these lame duck excuses pay off. Eagerly awaiting GW2, D3, MoP, tera etc to hit, let's see how ToR is looking after that because as it seems all thso egames have learnt from ToR's mistakes, however ToR learnt nothing from WoW or the many other MMos mistakes.

What are these mistakes? TOR has had the BIGGEST launch out of ANY MMO released... ever. Obviously they did something right. They are appealing to all the fanbases. You realize it is a Star Wars game right? There are a lot of people now joining the MMO market because of this name. They had to make this game user friendly because, believe it or not, not everyone in the world played WoW. Most of WoWs subs are from other countries anyways.

TOR is bringing more people to play MMOs just like WoW did. They are broadening peoples minds. You were probably the first in line saying TOR was going to be gamebreaking and next generation blah blah blah. Now you jumped that bandwagon and you are now saying GW2 is next generation blah blah blah. This cycle occurs every time a new game hits the market. You're going to jump off the GW2 bandwagon as soon as you see it is not the game you somehow imagined it to be.

I want to see reasoning beyond making bland statements with zero backing to them. Which 'mistakes' did these games learn from TOR? Bioware is pushing out content and LOTS of it. Blizzard has never done that before. Not once. Remember when ICC lasted like 10 months? I do.

[Arlee]

Personally I prefer to live in a world where WoW, SWTOR, GW2 (just naming those ones because they all have rather big differences) , and others can all do well and be successful together. Different game/pay/play styles will appeal to different people. Having variety is wonderful... and in the long run should push each company to produce a better product. It's great that if you don't like what one has to offer you can turn to a different one.

[Forsedar]

Personally I prefer to live in a world where WoW, SWTOR, GW2 (just naming those ones because they all have rather big differences) , and others can all do well and be successful together. Different game/pay/play styles will appeal to different people. Having variety is wonderful... and in the long run should push each company to produce a better product. It's great that if you don't like what one has to offer you can turn to a different one.

I agree. I want friendly competition among game developers because it pushes ALL of them to give the players enjoyable content to keep them playing.

[Surge]

I think the question is more complex than it appears at face value.

Was it the right time compared to what was on the market? I say absolutely, resoundingly, yes! As others have pointed out, there was no serious [new] competition at the time, and WoW was at a lull, in between expansions and at a point where many were tiring of Cataclysm. Not to mention, it was holiday season.

Now, was it the right time regarding the status of SWTOR development? I think that's a question that is a bit more difficult to answer. Personally, I think the game would have done better were it a bit more polished. The performance was poor, imo, in some of the areas that I care about the most -- warzones (PvP in general, unfortunately and especially with ability delay and animation problems among the two toons I liked playing the best) and end-game raid encounters (bugs and, in in MY opinion, bland encounters that seemed relatively untested). I also think they came out of the gates with a gun pointed at their own foot in terms of server population distribution; their hardware/software forces them to cap server populations way too low, imo, causing the population to have been spread out among too many servers. (I know, the rebuttal is that people complained of queue times -- that's not my argument. I'm saying the servers have always required a pop cap that is just too low.) Also, I just felt like overall, the game lacked the polish and responsiveness I expected for a "next gen" mmo, and I was frankly a bit miffed at being told that I just needed a better computer if I wanted Civil War and Ilum to be playable (when I was playing on the lowest possible settings and still having terrible performance on a rig that absolutely destroys pretty much everything else out right now).

So my answer is Yes. And No.

[inboundpaper]

It would have been cool, just so when I got kinda tired of Wow, Ster Wers would be there and new.

[Kellytm3]

no, it should have come out 2 years earlier, which is how the game feels, like its already dated

Really ??? You want to talk about TOR being dated looking ? How about taking your rose tinted glasses off and looking at the other MMO's on the market,especially the one that's serving up rehashed/recycled content to its subscribers and charging them for it,talk about " dated " !!! I've been playing TOR since day 1 December 13th,atm I have 1140 hours play time in TOR since its launch vs 2136 hours I amassed in WoW over a 3 year time period. I'm enjoying my time in TOR far more than I did in the other,but that's just me.

[Ravenblade]

Personally I prefer to live in a world where WoW, SWTOR, GW2 (just naming those ones because they all have rather big differences) , and others can all do well and be successful together. Different game/pay/play styles will appeal to different people. Having variety is wonderful... and in the long run should push each company to produce a better product. It's great that if you don't like what one has to offer you can turn to a different one.

I agree. It's about time that the MMO market abides to the same rules as the rest of the industry. I don't think it's a problem for Blizzard, Bioware or ArenaNet etc. at all, it's mainly people who think releasing a MMO is part of an elimination game and debates usually reflect that.